Reporters still want relevant pitches from PR pros and abhor the thoughtless shotgun approach that for reasons I will never understand (other than pure laziness), so many PR agencies (sadly) still do.

Journalists will ignore PR pros who won’t take the time to understand their interests before they pick up the phone and pitch a story (what they might do instead is put together another one of those “why I despise PR people” articles).

A reporter is more likely to cover a trends piece vs. as a standalone company story. As in the past, it behooves a PR pro to share the bigger picture in a pitch and insert the relevant client story as a case in point.

Oh…and PLEASE don’t forget to research the media channel and read the journalist’s most recent articles before you pitch. Sounds basic, I know, but not everyone does it.

These recommendations could have been written 10 or 20 or 30 years ago. They were as relevant then as they are today. But, in fact, they come out of The 2013 Top Tech Communicators Awards recently published by PRSourceCode which provides tech editorial, speaking, and award opportunity services for tech PR pros. It’s a useful report — which surveyed 68 journalists and 114 PR people — even though it reads much like the 2010 version of the same report which I wrote about here.

“Even in this Internet world, where the last story a journalist wrote is just a click away, journalists rail that PR folks fail to do their homework. Journalists say 93 percent of pitches are not on target,” reads the PRSourceCode press release announcing the survey results. “This points to a massive missed opportunity, as three out of four journalists say they use proactive pitches from PR folks to generate story ideas and sources.”

Imagine pitching a reporter before researching what that reporter likes to write about? Yup, happens all the time. Senior PR people will do the profession a great service by mentoring the junior people to NEVER pitch a reporter or blogger before doing their homework.

Journalists, by a wide margin, also still prefer email pitches (99 percent which is actually higher than in 2010) while 70 percent of PR people use the phone for pitching (this stat actually surprises me since so many junior people especially are reticent to pick up the phone these days). “PR pros need to hold the phone,” reads the report. In addition to using the phone to pitch story ideas, PR pros who participated in the survey of course also use email (100% of them). But apparently a high percentage, to the chagrin of journalists, are using the phone to follow-up on their email pitch.

The report also shares winners of the annual top tech communications awards including top tech business and trade publications (print and online), top tech blogs (no real surprises here), top tech journalists as well as top tech PR agencies and top in-house departments. You can read the entire report right here.